1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention relates to the field of audio/video network systems, and more specifically, to device registration.
2. Description of Related Art
Network audio/video systems provide a versatile and efficient way for home entertainment. A typical network audio/video system includes an audio/video server connected to a network to communicate with a number of clients. The audio/video server usually has a hard disk drive (HDD) that can store audio/video data (e.g., music, movies) on hundreds of compact disks (CD's) or digital versatile disks (DVD's). The audio server may also have a large CD database that contains information on CD's such as identifiers, titles, authors, content lists, etc. Client devices such as boom boxes, computers, audio/video players can download audio/video data and information through network connectivity.
A registration procedure is typically needed to allow the audio/video server and a client device to obtain identification information for communication. Existing techniques for registration have a number of drawbacks. In a first method, command buttons are entered on both the server and the client and the two exchange information over the network. This technique is simple but unsecured. An adversary may intercept the communication and compromise the security. In a second method, an identification (ID) card containing the ID information of the client is installed in the server. The card may be a Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash memory device. This method is costly, requiring the ID card and a slot interface in the server. In a third method, the server and the client are connected with an interface cable such as USB. This method is costly and inconvenient because it requires both the server and the client to have dedicated USB interface. In the last method, a remote commander having a client ID is used to send the client ID to the server. The problem with this method is the difficulty to pair the remote unit with the client because the same ID number must be programmed in both of the remote unit and the client. There is also a chance for erroneous pairing.